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Teacher Sent From God
51
witnessed to their power. But these efforts made no lasting impres-
sion. There was a brief check in the current of evil but its downward
course was not stayed.
When Christ came to earth, humanity seemed to be fast reaching
its lowest point. The very foundations of society were undermined.
The Jews, destitute of the power of God’s Word, gave to the world
mind-benumbing, soul-deadening traditions and speculations. The
worship of God “in Spirit and in truth” had been supplanted by the
glorification of humans in an endless round of ceremonies. Through-
out the world all systems of religion were losing their hold on mind
and soul.
As people ceased to recognize the Divine, they ceased to regard
the human. Truth, honor, integrity, confidence, compassion, were
departing from the earth. Relentless greed and absorbing ambition
gave birth to universal distrust. The idea of duty, of the obligation
of strength to weakness, of human dignity and human rights, was
cast aside as a dream or a fable. Wealth and power, ease and self-
indulgence, were sought as the highest good. Physical degeneracy,
mental stupor, spiritual death, characterized the age.
As the evil passions and purposes of men and women banished
God from their thoughts, so forgetfulness of Him inclined them
more strongly to evil. Bent on self-pleasing, they came to regard
God as such a one as themselves—a Being whose aim was self-
glory, whose requirements were suited to His own pleasure, a Being
by whom people were lifted up or cast down according as they
helped or hindered His selfish purpose. The lower classes regarded
the Supreme Being as one scarcely differing from their oppressors,
except by exceeding them in power.
By these ideas every form of religion was molded. Each was
a system of requirements. By gifts and ceremonies the worshipers
tried to propitiate the Deity in order to secure His favor for their
own ends. Evil, unrestrained, grew stronger, while appreciation
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and desire for good diminished. People lost the image of God and
received the impress of the demoniacal power by which they were
controlled. The whole world was becoming a sink of corruption.